TREK AND CAMP, 207 



Some of those I attended had spent a night stealing the meat from an elephant I 

 had hoped to convert into flour, and had fought and slashed at each other with their 

 knives. When jthey had stripped the carcase bare, they came back and coolly 

 strolled up to my camp to have cut fingers and various other wounds, received 

 during the night, attended to. However, the tribe were on the whole a very fair lot, 

 for when it was explained to them that they had had all the meat for nothing, and 

 that I now wanted flour for nothing, they quite saw the justice of the argument. 

 So the hat, in the shape of my bath, made a tour of the villages and received 

 contributions of flour. The natives' ideas of the amount of flour an elephant was 

 worth was rather smaller when half the animal was eaten than it would have been 

 if I could have approached them when suffering from meat hunger. 



The first time that the flour was stored for the night in the bath (for want 

 of a sack), I watched my Uganda headman levelling the top of the flour and 

 making little patterns and impressions on the top with one of my cups before 

 stowing it under the flies of the tent. Now, you never see a native do a thing 

 like that without some good reason, and it struck me immediately that the designs 

 were executed for a purpose, and that the dodge was one of those very simple 

 little precautions which no one ever thinks of for one's self. For if the flour was 

 just piled up anyhow in the bath someone might come during the night and help 

 himself to it without anyone else being much the wiser ; but with the simple 

 precaution of the cup designs it would be impossible for anyone to take even a 

 handful without disturbing the patterns, and it would be equally impossible for anyone 

 to make similar patterns again in the dark or without the help of my cup. 



In unhealthy countries if the traveller does not do himself fairly well in the way 

 of food-stores, he quickly gets run down and covered with veldt sores. It is a very 

 false form of economy to try to do himself cheaply, as it lays him open to fevers 

 and many other tropical ailments. However, on a long trek, far from civilisation, the 

 inevitable day must arrive when nearly all his stores are finished, and he has then to 

 live as best he can on the resources of the country. A knowledge of these resources 

 (which resources are always poor), and of how they can be turned to account, is 

 invaluable at such times. 



The amount of food-stores you can carry with you is generally decided by the 

 number of porters your funds enable you to engage, or the number it is feasible to 

 take with you. From twenty to thirty porters are generally as many as can be taken 

 with comfort. The greater your following the greater the difficulty you have in 

 feeding them ; besides, the trouble and delay caused by collecting food counter- 

 balances the extra loads it would be possible to take. 



